1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to processes related to media storage and archive, and more particularly to a radio frequency identification process for media storage and archive.
2. Background Art
Media items, such as magnetic tapes, disks, documents, folders, boxes, and so forth, are routinely sent to storage facilities for archival. For example, a business or individual may have records that need to be stored, but may not have the necessary storage space in which to archive the items themselves. They may thus enlist a media archival company, who in turn receives the media items, stores them, and returns them to the business or individual on demand.
In traditional media archival systems, a person is responsible for “checking in” items to be archived. The person identifies the item, records a notation of the item in the log, and sends the item to be stored. A storage team may update the log by denoting the storage location once the item has been archived. When a business or individual wishes to retrieve the item, the log is consulted to find out where the item is stored. It can then be retrieved appropriately.
A problem associated with media archival occurs when a particular item is lost. Loss can be due to a variety of reasons—data entry error in the log when the item is received, storage in the wrong place, improper storage location denotation in the log, accidental movement within the storage facility, and so forth. Where critical business data was disposed on a lost item, the loss can result in thousands of dollars or hundreds of man-hours attempting to reclaim the critical business data.
It would be advantageous to have an improved archival system.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.